Feel free to track me on Twitter, follow me on Forbes and fan me on HuffPo to receive dispatches from the front lines of education, culture and travel. Moreover, please visit JamesCrotty.com for links to my books, magazines, and other creative work, including my fun and inspiring documentary on debate, mentorship, and surrogate family as antidotes to the South Bronx dropout epidemic, Crotty’s Kids.

Badges Lend Gravitas To Free Education Revolution

Just over a year ago, I wrote a column about badges, those digital displays of hyper-focused competency that migrated from foursquare, gaming, and e-commerce to education. I noted then that badges “won’t supplant transcripts, majors, degrees, and resumes anytime soon,” but that “they are a free or low-cost way in which job-seekers can demonstrate hyper-specialized competency in lieu of, or as an adjunct to, a certificate or diploma.” I also mentioned in an earlier piece on MITx that badges might be a way for a free online Massive Open Online Course (or MOOC) to verify competency.

Since I wrote those earlier columns, badges have come of age. Instead of being sophomoric demarcations of inane competency — such as “Great Listener!” — badges have expanded in breadth and depth. As a result, badges are now offered by an increasing number and variety of credible schools and programs, including the Kahn Academy, Carnegie Mellon, and, yes, MITx and edX.

According to Manhattan-based non-profit, Professional Examination Service (PES) — the self-proclaimed “most experienced organization in professional licensure and certification services” — badges have also grown more sophisticated and secure. According to a PES press release, badges now come packaged around credentialing ecosystems, such as PES’ ProExam Digital Micro-Credential (or DMC) service, which was recently unveiled at the Association of Test Publishers’ annual Innovations in Testing Conference in Fort Lauderdale.

Through its new DMC Program, PES hopes to support its more than 60 professional organization and over 100 licensing board clients — think HR Certification Institute, Project Management Institute, and the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards — in providing additional, highly specific micro-credentials as a precursor for, or an add-on to, an existing credential. Say an information technology credentialing organization wants to inspire careers in IT among high school students, but knows its full credential is out of reach. Working with PES, the organization “chunks” one part of its full credential in an area of both interest and high utility, such as “iOS App Programming.” The organization then creates a separate professional-grade assessment for this new micro-credential. This new micro-credential is consequently considered a precursor to, and counts toward, a full “Programming” credential.

One conundrum associated with badges in the past was how to ascertain consistent validity and security. Organizations like PES now enable educational institutions to issue an industry-standard micro-credential that recipients can easily display, manage and share without fear of denigration.

These digital credentials are not mere images (see above). Rather, the badge image links back to verification information on servers that enable anyone looking at the badge to quickly verify the issuing institution, the person to whom the badge was issued, the criteria for receiving the badge, and even evidence and testimonials related to the credential. This is superior to the old self-report system associated with badges because now a potential employer can verify the authenticity of badge information through a third party system rather than just by trusting the applicant.

Moreover, badge information has become more granular and objective than is possible with transcripts and diplomas. For example, with improved badge technology, a prospective employer can quickly and easily compare test and grade results among applicants in say a specific subject, e.g. HTML programming. Two candidates may have the same GPA from the same credentialing institution. They may even have taken the exact same courses in the exact same major. Still, a prospective employer has a hard time ascertaining which candidate is best prepared for the highly specific job at hand. With the more detailed, and objectively verifiable, information provided via improved badge technology, the employer can identify which applicant is better prepared in the discreet competency for which they are hiring.

In addition, as startups like Open Study are valiantly trying to prove, badges, when done right, can now demonstrate vital soft skills — such as teamwork, problem-solving, initiative, passion and engagement — that are empirically far better predictors of career and life success than mere transcripts. At this stage, such soft skill badges are still too easy to attain, but they will hopefully get more rigorous over time.

Finally, thanks to the oversight and insights of organizations like PES, institutions can now offer secure web-based testing that is remotely proctored. This dramatically expands the possibilities associated with free online courses because distance and language will no longer be obstacles in testing for knowledge accrued in massive open online courses (or MOOCs).

There are still just as many questions as answers when it comes to online learning, including whether it is best suited for rote, more easily commoditized, “training” as opposed to more complex and nuanced “education.” Nevertheless, at least my call for “free education for all” finally has some credentialing meat to it.

What do you think? Let me know in the comment area below. In addition, feel free to track me on Twitter and follow me on Forbes to receive dispatches from the front lines of global education. Finally, please visit www.JamesCrotty.com for links to my books, magazines, and other creative work, including my forthcoming documentary on the urban dropout epidemic, Crotty’s Kids.

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I would recommend to research more available solutions. For example Badge Fever – http://badgefever.com . It is global tool to create, collect and display achievements (badges). Its seamless implementation saves time and resources to all parties as well as all parties can benefit from advantages Badge Fever brings.

The Open Badges team at Mozilla is excited about Professional Examination Service’s work and seeing their Digital Micro-Credentials become open (read: interoperable and stackable with badges from other issuers). We support an ecosystem that includes many badge issuers, earners, and tools to manage badges that individuals have earned. We also hope to see efforts in this space be grounded in a metadata standard–including information about badge criteria, standards, and evidence–so that learners of all ages can easily show what they’re capable of.

More than 600 organizations–ranging from formal and informal educational institutions; multinational corporations; industry associations; non-profits; and groups interested in professional development–have issued over 60,000 badges that align with this open source infrastructure since its beta launch.

Great piece James! Certifications are definitely one of the big, innovative steps in today’s education space. While your article speaks more specifically to the technology and security behind today’s badging systems, the content hit home for me, as I head up the marketing for HootSuite University, the educational arm of HootSuite, where we deliver education on our product (the HootSuite dashboard), as well as social media overall.

Naturally, we see huge value in digital and online education, and the importance of bridging the skills gap in today’s workforce. We do this in a few ways, but I wanted to reach out and let you know about our HootSuite Certification Program, as it ties in directly with this piece, and the importance of recognized credentials outside of higher education.

You might also be interested to learn about our Higher Education Program, which allows universities to enroll their students in HootSuite University for free for 90 days. The professors bring our video courseware and other materials into the classroom, to teach their students the digital skills and tools needed for today’s workforce. Professors struggle to find the time to stay up to date with such a rapidly changing industry, and yet they recognize the need for this education, so our program helps to solve that problem.

Given your focus on education, I would love the opportunity to chat further with you. If you’re interested in learning more about our program, or want to chat about the education space in any way, feel free to reach out on Twitter @allierus. It was great to read your piece, and I hope we can be in touch. Cheers!

Now that badges have “come of age,” people need a way to display and share them and employers are looking for a trusted third-party that can verify the validity of the credentials. ProExam Vault is a new service that functions as a badge “backpack” where credentials can be managed and verified. Individuals who have earned open badges that conform to the Mozilla Foundation’s Open Badge Infrastructure – like the ProExam Digital Micro-Credentials – can now keep all their open badges from multiple issuers in one location, and employers are able to go to the ProExam Vault and verify the badges. The new ProExam Vault is a piece in badge ecosystem puzzle that allows micro-credentials to empower individuals and employers.